Celebrating The Legacy Of Bertolt Brecht

October 30, 1986|By Richard Christiansen, Entertainment editor.

TORONTO — Actress Elsa Lanchester`s primary memory of Bertolt Brecht was that of the stench of his long, black cigars. Lanchester had watched while her husband Charles Laughton and Brecht collaborated in the mid-1940s in preparing the first American production of the German playwright`s ``Galileo``; and though she admitted he had talent, she didn`t care much for him or his ``awful cigars.``

``He didn`t have a very strong personality,`` was Lanchester`s summary of Brecht, and yet, as she knew, too, he was a writer of greatness whose work would profoundly affect and help shape the course of 20th Century theater.

It was this enduring greatness of Brecht that formed the inspiration for a singular scholarly and theatrical conference recently in Toronto.

Running one week (Oct. 21-26) in a daily round of lectures, films, panels, exhibits, master classes and live performances across the city, the

``Brecht: Thirty Years After`` conference, initiated by professors Pia Kleber and Colin Visser of the University of Toronto`s college drama program and co-sponsored by the International Theatre Institute, marked the 30th anniversary of Brecht`s death.

Critics such as Martin Esslin and Eric Bentley, playwrights such as West Germany`s Franz Xaver Kroetz and Scotland`s John McGrath, and avant-garde directors such as Joanne Akalaitis of the United States and Roger Planchon of France came to Toronto to discuss everything from ``Brecht in Spain`` and

``The Post-Brechtian Hero in Brazil`` to ``Can Brecht Be Relevant?`` and

``The Critic and Political Theater.`` In the spirit of an international festival, Canadian theater and opera companies, large and small, also joined European troupes in presenting 18 Brecht and post-Brechtian productions in venues scattered across the city.

The peak of the activities was, however, the American debut of the Berliner Ensemble, the repertory theater founded by Brecht himself in East Berlin in 1949 and the mother ship of Brecht performance in the world today.

It had been Kleber`s original intention to bring over a small unit of selected artists from the Ensemble to perform during the festival; but, with the backing of Ed and David Mirvish, the father-and-son producers of the Royal Alexandra Theater in Toronto, the decision was made to import the full company for a week`s repertory of ``The Threepenny Opera`` and ``The Caucasian Chalk Circle.`` Among the 90 members of the Ensemble was Ekkehard Schaal, husband of Brecht`s daughter Barbara, who joined the company in 1952 and has become its leading actor. (Since 1969, he estimates, he has played Brecht`s ``Arturo Ui,`` his most popular role, more than 600 times.)

As Barbara Brecht Schaal and Manfred Wekwerth, the company`s director since 1977, emphasize, the Berliner Ensemble contains more than Brecht in its present repertoire of 18 productions. Shakespeare, Goethe and contemporary European writers such as Samuel Beckett and Dario Fo are played in the 730-seat Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm in East Berlin.

Nor do the Berliners strictly preserve in amber the original stagings of their founder. According to Barbara Brecht Schaal, the company since its inception has presented three productions, ``different, top to bottom,`` of

``Galileo`` alone, and the current production of ``The Threepenny Opera,``

first staged in 1985, has been markedly influenced by Fo`s social satire.

Nonetheless, it was the desire to see the ``definitve`` productions of Brecht`s plays, performed by his own company, that drew many visitors to Toronto, and, in that respect, the result was both exhilarating and disappointing.

It is a thrill, certainly, to see this ensemble perform large-scale productions of Brecht`s plays in their original German, a language in which the hard, sharp edges of the playwright`s vision come across vividly. And the company`s performance style is assured and precise, marks of an ensemble in which the members have long worked together.

At the same time, however, particularly in ``Threepenny,`` there seemed to be a lack of fury and energy that one can find on occasion in a smaller, fiercer, less-lavish presentation (such as Bailiwick Repertory`s 1984 production in a tiny upstairs theater in Chicago).

The most unsettling aspect of the production is its opening sequence

(inspired by Fo, according to Wekwerth), in which the famous ballad of

``Mack the Knife`` is sung in sleazy style by a punk rocker gyrating before a frenzied rock-concert crowd. This punk version is cut short when the singer is stabbed in the back (by Mack the Knife), after which, rising from the dead with a sardonic smile, he resumes his ballad (and the play) in traditional style, accompanied by a hurdygurdy.

This jarring effect, Wekwerth says, is designed to make the point that the song, originally written to introduce an element of danger into the theater, ironically has evolved into a cliche of pop music, something Brecht would have abhorred.